Name: Toby Ellison

Profession: Banker (a nice one)

Age: 39

Height: 6’3”

Likes: Orderly English queues and sassy British blondes…

On a ding-dong noise of a doorbell, Poppy opens the false door at the side of the kitchen set. Toby enters.

‘This is nicer than the Puss in Boots.’ He launches a lively rehash of his near miss with the Golden Square brothel with Faith. They’re taking to recording for television like ducks to water. I send them to the refrigerator to select ingredients.

After toying on-camera with the double entendres of ‘tossed salad’ and ‘bangers and mash’, we opt for a less salacious-sounding dish of pumpkin gnocchi (from a packet) and a fresh garlic and rocket cream sauce.

Faith and I don our aprons: a black lacy number for her while mine is a white cotton pinafore. Poppy escorts Toby out the false door. Plonked on to the red velvet sofa and cocooned in headphones, he’s right there beside us, but he won’t hear a word we’re saying. A selection of men’s magazines fan over an end table. Toby flicks open an FHM and when his eyes widen, Pugsy zooms in. Toby grins cheekily to camera. I know from experience it’ll take us over an hour to produce content that the editors will trim to twenty-two minutes of showtime in post-production.

Over here in the kitchen, we begin to prepare the meal. Under guidance, Faith skins the pumpkin, cuts it into small cubes of orange flesh and puts it on to steam. Softening the gnocchi in a separate pot of boiling water, she and Poppy have fun scooping it out the moment it floats to the top. Without causing her eyes to water, but with knife skills that strike fear in me she’ll lose a finger, Faith finely dices the onion and garlic. In a little oil, she sautés them until they are clear. On my instruction, she pours in the cream.

The sauce thickening, I take over. Poppy redirects Faith to a handful of wild rocket and a sharp, curved herb cutter.

‘Careful,’ I warn.

‘I’m always careful.’ Faith looks dreamily over at Toby, currently air-drumming to whatever music he’s listening to, his green eyes closed. ‘Rumours are true…’

Poppy giggles softly.

‘You’re alluding to rumours about handsomely endowed black men?’ I finish.

Unexpectedly, Faith heads to the refrigerator. She returns to the bench wielding an exceptionally elongated purple aubergine that looks distinctly like what (I imagine) a black man’s very ample penis might look like, if it were a vegetable.

‘Good Lord!’ I say.

‘More like thank the Lord.’ Faith passes me her phallic vegetable, which I drop immediately onto the bench.